A rest to stretch

Something that is significant for the Alexander Technique is that there are virtually no drills. If you want to do somethingfor yourself with an Alexander technique approach I warmly recommend this procedure, laying in semi-supine or the Alexander rest.

The purpose is to give you the opportunity to observe what is happening in your body and give your muscles a chance to ease. An important prerequisite of this work with yourself is that you are observing without evaluating.

This is a short note on semi-supine.



This position is certainly familiar to many already. My dad told me that during the harvest when he was a child, grandfather rolled up his shirt into a hard roll and had a lay down on the meadow (like the picture) with the roll under his head, waiting for Grandma to come with the coffee basket.

This position offers the body a posibility to good rest, it gives the disks in the spine a chance to rehydrate and thus swell up again and it can - if you rest consciously - teach you where you accumulate unnecessary muscular tension and also contribute to an active ease (not to mix with relaxation which is something completely different!).

What you need is a warm rug or mat to lie on and a couple of paperback books to put under your head.

The way you choose to get to the floor may be different but once you are laying on the floor there are some things to pay attention to.

1, allow yourself to settle, take a few breaths - do not adjust anything
2, note how you perceive the weight through the back of the head on the books, how the contact between the floor and scapula, sacrum and feet feel.
3, be aware that your knees have a direction towards the ceiling. (If your legs feel unstable or trembling, it is better that you let your knees fall against one another than to try to hold them in place).
4, the hands can rest of the stomach, chest or iliac crest.
5, keep you eyes open - keep looking.

What happens without you having to "do anything" is that the muscles on the front of the body such as chest muscles, abdominal muscles, hip flexor muscles will become more supple and therefor make it possible for the back to come into a closer contact with the surface.

A strained hip flexor muscle pulls the lower back against the femur and contributes to an increased lordosis and a restricted movement of the hip joint. It affects your ability to smooth sitting trot or gallop. Shortened chest muscles pulls on the shoulders (rounded shoulders), and this in turn limits the movement of the shoulder joint and affect the quality of your hands.

If you give yourself 15-20 minutes of semi-supine five days a week your muscles will have got a regular dose of mild "gravity based" stretching and the bending muscles at the front of the body have let go of the back muscles and you end up being straigther.

Once you have been laing for some days in a row, you will be able to evoke the feeling of how your back rests on the floor while sitting on a chair at the desk. The kinesthetic memory is precious, you'll be able discover how the the shoulders are brought forwards to the keyboard when you're working for example, and you will be able to "release them back" again just by knowing which direction the releas has to go.

What you learn about yourself when you refine your body image will affect your everyday life on many levels. Start your journey today, visit yourself through the Alexander rest.

”Clear thinkers try to find the causes, while the average look for escapes from effects.” ~~~ Barbara Anna Brennan